Fort Morgan High School's International club tours Emerald Isle

CHERYL FLAIR SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Members of the Fort Morgan High School International Club tour of Ireland hold up copies of The Fort Morgan Times in front of the Blarney Castle.
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Cheryl Flair, Fort Morgan High School International Club sponsor and group leader for the club's EF tour of Ireland said of the eleven day adventure, "Every day was a best day!"

The group of 14(Cheryl and Jon Flair, Barbara Keenan, Karen Sheldon, Julie Epple, Celia and Joey Smits, Kaylee Dermer, Kristi and Katlyn Moehr, Levi Morrison, Andy and Michael McClary and Jay Broda arrived in Dublin June 6 to sunny skies and flew home from Dublin June 15 with sunny skies. Joe Mernagh, the tour director, said the group came during the ten days of summer in Ireland.

Besides enjoying visits to St. Patrick's Cathedral (Anglican) and marveling at the 5th century artistry of the Book of Kells, housed in Trinity College, the group admired the many colored doors of Georgian row houses, watching people, buskers and swans in St. Stevan's Green, and marvelled at the elaborate Bronze Age gold torques and other massive gold jewelry worn by powerful Celtic noblity and royalty. although the bustling streets of Dublin seemed too crowded to some, others planned to return.

Club members seem happier in the countryside and smaller towns. An unexpected photo stop for the bridge in The Quiet Man allowed kids to wade and walk across the stones of a shallow stream, and appreciate the beauty of the fields and skies and nearby "mountain." After they travelled into Galway, heading into the "wild west," they enjoyed the contented cows, resting in lush green meadows, dotted with tiny daisies and yellow buttercups.

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The fields in the center and south of the country were hedged by flowering hawthorne bushes, some as large as trees, but in the west, the fields had stone walls, and stone houses were often roofed with slate, rather than tiles and thatch.

Animals can roam freely, and they have right of way on the narrow, often hedged to the pavement, country roads .

Eric, the group's skilled bus driver from Edinburgh, Scotland, was nerveless as he slid past another tour bus, lorry (truck), or farm machinery. Because they were passing the scenic sand beaches of Galway Bay on a sunny Saturday, they encountered huge traffic jams as Irish headed, like lemmings, to those beaches.

The Cliffs of Maher, part of the limestone Burren, stretch five miles of Atlantic coast, and are 700 feet high. Walking to O'Brian's Tower and over the cliffs was a high point for everyone on the tour.

Barbara Keenan and Karen Sheldon, who, on a previous tour, "saw" the cliffs through wind gusts, driving rain and fog, were particularly thrilled to see the grass and moss topped cliffs, rising majestically above the sparkling, calm waters of the Atlantic lapping the caves and intricately carved stones standing near the shore.

An overnight stay in a traditional Faulty Towers type hotel, in Lisdoonvara, offered a change from the modern hotel in Dublin.

Lisdoonvara is famous as the Matchmaking town. Every weekend in September, singles who wish to marry converge on the small town, hoping to find a mate. A film, "The Matchmaker," was filmed there.

Group members were interested in the signs, first in Irish/Gaelic, then English, then German. The west of Ireland attracts many Germans, and a tour bus full of Germans also stayed in the hotel. The group split up to listen to traditional music, played in the many hotels and pubs there. Watching a TV channel in Gaelic, with English subtitles, is enlightening.

Language differences in English are always fascinating. Speed bumps are "traffic calmers;" to take a risk is "to chance an arm;""to organize is to "sort out; and group members often had "intervals of bright" with thundery showers and disturbed weather. Garbage cans are "rubbish bins" and smart experts are "boffins," so members could translate a TV weatherman's disgusted comment that "The boffins ought to investigate our rubbish weather." Americans check off items; Irish "tick the boxes."

After four glorious, unexpected sunny, warm days, the typical Irish summer returned, and the group almost saw the Ring of Kerry, the 112-mile coastal peninsula route (more very narrow roads, with the Atlantic Ocean below) in a day filled with lowering clouds, fog, wind gusts and heavy rain.

Nevertheless, members were prepared for rain, and slogged though a muddy, disapointingly touristy Bog Village, and returned, through rain, to Killarney.

Many toured the National Park and city in a jaunting cart; others trudged through rainy streets to a majestic cathedra, built on the site of mass graves, dug during the Potato Famine and Starvation time. Listening to traditional music in Danny Mann's, a popular pub, was an experience for students and adults.

Two "castles", Bunratty (a "castle-lite") and the larger Blarney were climbed during "intervals of bright." Both were placed in extensive gardens, and Bunratty also offered a Folk Park, so members could envision the lives of earlier Irish farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and workers. Of course the obligatory gift shops appealed to those who came to shop.

Highlights of the tour were the Cliffs of Maher, the Queenstown Experience, a new museum in Cobh (Cove, the deep water port of Cork from which the Titanic sailed on its fateful voyage and in whose waters the Luisitania was sunk by German U-boats, an horrific act which brought America into WWI); the ancient, tiny cathedral ruins and ancient graveyard which still had 11th century Celtic crosses; the incredible Giant's Causeway on the coast of Antrim, Northern Ireland, and the local tour guides to entertained us at the National Stud Farm and the Tower Museum in Derry, Northern Ireland.

As usual, shopping was a highlight to some, and members did our part to help the economy of the wounded Celtic Tiger recover. Many enjoyed fish and chips, the creamy vegetable soups served with oat bread, tea and scones, and marveled at the Irish breakfast served in some hotels--eggs, rashes of ham-like bacon, bangers (mild sausages), baked bans, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, black and white blood pudding, toast, and always corn flakes and other cereals. Canned grapefruit and oranges was also unusual to many.

A popular hotel was the elegant, Victorian-styled Blarney Hotel, located in the grounds of Blarney Castle, and just steps from the shopping mecca, the Blarney Woolen Mills.

Even though the flying days were grueling and interminable, little dimmed the spirits and good humor of the group. The tour was further enhanced by the knowledge, wit, story-telling and singing ability of the tour director, Joe Mernagh, descendant of Viking Kings in Waterford, who could explain the intricacies of the IRA and its splinter groups, film references (sites like the library at Trinity College and the Cliffs of Moher, which were seen in "The Princess Bride" and various Harry Potter films) and any other question he was asked.

The humorous, ongoing teasing banter among Joe, Eric the bus driver, Andy McClary, who more than held his own, Jon Flair and Jay Broda, added laughter to long bus drives and other stressful times.

Other sights, like the Peddle Pub in Dublin, a small bar set on wheels, where the customers peddled down Trinity Street while enjoying their pint, or seeing a nursing home connected to a pub, or the Titanic tee shirts: "It was OK when it left here" and "Built by the Irish; sunk by the English" were delightful glimpses into another culture.

The last meal in Dublin, in a 17th century pub, A Jug of Punch, next to the harbor, and in the rain seemed a perfect way to end a tour which gave embers good days and good stories and usually both.

Once again, International Club students splendidly represented their families, FMHS and the community. They were funny, helpful, on time, curious, imaginative and thoughtful; they "adopted" into their group a lone boy, Tony, from an Illinois group, including him in all their games and activities.

They were more responsible than many adults from other groups who sometimes made being with them in a group of 45 a challenge, and much more focused on their experiences than many from other groups who came to shop and complain.

The tour was such a success that Flair was overheard saying she was thinking of another International Club trip in two years, possibly to Pompeii and Rome.

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